Death toll from California mudslide rises to 10

Associated Press

Published 6:30 am, Wednesday, January 12, 2005

LA CONCHITA, Calif. — Rescuers searching with shovels, their bare hands and tiny video cameras dropped into holes found the bodies of a woman and three of her children before dawn today, bringing the death toll from a mudslide in this seaside hamlet to 10, officials said.

Ventura County Fire Capt. Danny Rodriguez said the bodies were found as crews worked around the clock for a second straight night, swarming over the debris pile under a clear sky and powerful lights.

Officials said 13 people remained missing after Monday's 30-foot-deep mudslide, which was triggered by five days of nearly nonstop rain. It was not immediately known if that number included the four people found Tuesday. With the 10 known dead at La Conchita, the storm's toll in California has risen to 25 since Friday.

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Wallet had been among the most visible of the town's residents since the slide as he frantically searched alongside firefighters for his 37-year-old wife, Mechelle, and daughters Hannah, 10, Raven, 6, and Paloma, 2.

After the bodies were found, friends took him out of town with his 16-year-old daughter, who was in Ventura when the slide hit.

The days of torrential rain also triggered fatal traffic accidents all across the state, knocked out power to hundreds of thousands, imperiled hillside homes and caused flash floods.

In La Conchita, firefighters remained hopeful they might still find at least some people alive, while acknowledging that any survivors would have to be found quickly.

"The rescuers are continuing to find some voids between the collapsed structures," Ventura County Fire Chief Bob Roper said today on NBC's "Today" show.

Ten people were injured in the slide, which came down like a curving, rolling waterfall onto the tiny town between Highway 101 and a coastal bluff.

Fifteen homes were destroyed and 16 were damaged. Roper said the slide rolled homes over and intermixed debris, hindering efforts to identify the rubble of specific houses.

The painstaking search through layer upon layer of muck was made more difficult by the jumble of building wreckage mixed with the mud. Rescuers tried to carefully scoop out parts of the pile to make sure they checked sections of trapped air where a survivor might be able to breathe. The tiny video cameras were inserted into voids.

The searchers were using dogs trained to search for live victims and others that can locate cadavers. If rescuers believed they had located an air pocket, both types of dogs would be called over to determine if anyone was nearby, said Capt. Bill Monahan, head of the Los Angeles County Fire Department canine unit.

Monahan said he had been up for four days straight working on rescue efforts elsewhere during Southern California's record downpours, before he was called to La Conchita.

"It's been four days of death and destruction," he said.

Rescuers got a break Tuesday when the rain finally stopped. National Weather Service forecaster Stuart Seto said clear weather was expected to continue through at least the weekend.

The storms' effect was also felt outside California.

Muddy rivers roared through towns along the Nevada-Arizona-Utah lines on Tuesday, flooding homes in the Nevada resort town of Mesquite and forcing the evacuation of about 100 people in nearby Overton.

Seven of Arizona's 15 counties have declared states of emergency to qualify for cleanup funding and aid, with the hardest hit in the northwestern tip of the state and central regions.

Fourteen houses were destroyed or washed away at the northwest Arizona community of Beaver Dam. "Beaver Dam as we know it is gone," said Tim Stejskal, 53. No deaths or serious injuries were reported.

National Guard helicopters were sent to airlift residents of two areas of southern Utah's Washington County who were stranded by washed-out bridges and roads. The county was declared a state disaster area.

"It's a situation that one must see to believe," Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman said. "Property has been lost, homes have been lost, families have been relocated."